A samurai, Gengo, has succeeded in amassing a large sum of money badly needed for a vendetta of ‘the forty-seven ronin’. Gengo falls prey to an apparently unscrupulous couple, who swindle him out of his treasure. However, it soons becomes apparent – to the audience – that the couple are in fact servants of his own uncle, and that their only purpose is to obtain that same sum of money for ‘the young master’, whom they have never met. Noël Burch: ‘Jean Ricardou has remarked, in writing of Borges, “in fiction, the real and the virtual have the same status, since both are established and governed by the laws of writing”. Shura is one of the most masterful demonstrations of this theorem to be encountered in cinema.’
